gma2lana's review
3.0
Just ok. I didn't like the reference of fat people used in her descriptions. otherwise...ho hum
ncrabb's review
3.0
I’ve allowed this to languish on a hard drive for just a couple of months shy of 10 years. It’s past due for an encounter with my book players.
No one knows who is deliberately frightening the occupants of San Francisco’s Globe Hotel, a falling-to-pieces building in the most hellish part of the famous tenderloin neighborhood. The renters are primarily Vietnamese immigrants recently arrived because of the war. Sharon McCone’s insurance agency wants her to figure out what’s causing the scary encounters between the residents and an unknown shadow apparently intent on driving them out. She visits the place early in the book and encounters some vividly described people inside and out. Your heart goes out immediately to the Vietnamese who live there. They are justifiably frightened. As she reconnoiters the neighborhood, she finds the tragedies of the tenderloin as it was in the 1980s. There’s the preacher filled with profanity and vengeance; you’ll encounter a porn king who owns a chain of porn theaters and a porn production company. Then you meet the guy who owns a Vietnamese market from which the occupants of the building in which Sharon is interested purchase things. It is nearly Christmas as the book opens.
It isn’t many days before the problem escalates from merely attempting to frightening tenants to murdering one. A young Vietnamese man in his 20s dies at the hand of a killer Sharon must find.
Before this short book ends, the pornography theater owner dies after seducing a teenage Vietnamese immigrant.
This has a good plot that works well and moves quickly. It’s a fascinating snapshot of 1980s-era San Francisco.
No one knows who is deliberately frightening the occupants of San Francisco’s Globe Hotel, a falling-to-pieces building in the most hellish part of the famous tenderloin neighborhood. The renters are primarily Vietnamese immigrants recently arrived because of the war. Sharon McCone’s insurance agency wants her to figure out what’s causing the scary encounters between the residents and an unknown shadow apparently intent on driving them out. She visits the place early in the book and encounters some vividly described people inside and out. Your heart goes out immediately to the Vietnamese who live there. They are justifiably frightened. As she reconnoiters the neighborhood, she finds the tragedies of the tenderloin as it was in the 1980s. There’s the preacher filled with profanity and vengeance; you’ll encounter a porn king who owns a chain of porn theaters and a porn production company. Then you meet the guy who owns a Vietnamese market from which the occupants of the building in which Sharon is interested purchase things. It is nearly Christmas as the book opens.
It isn’t many days before the problem escalates from merely attempting to frightening tenants to murdering one. A young Vietnamese man in his 20s dies at the hand of a killer Sharon must find.
Before this short book ends, the pornography theater owner dies after seducing a teenage Vietnamese immigrant.
This has a good plot that works well and moves quickly. It’s a fascinating snapshot of 1980s-era San Francisco.
amalyndb's review
5.0
These mystery novels offer an unintentional glimpse into issues during the late 1970s and 1980s, some of which are issues again today.
Sharon McCone is contracted by a refugee assistance agency. There had been emigration on a large scale of people from Vietnam, people who had lost everything. They had been housed throughout San Francisco wherever cheap housing could be found. In one apartment building, referred to as a Tenderloin hotel, someone has been trying to terrorize residents: creepy shadows in the stairwells, howling noises in the furnace room, and random power loss to the building.
Soon after she begins to investigate, one of the young men in the building is found murdered in the furnace room.
A lot of elements intertwine: a porn producer promising a young immigrant woman her break into show business through his films, the clash between maintaining traditional cultural identity versus assimilating American experiences, religious zealot street preachers and a homeless man who communicates predominantly through quoting Yeats.
This one doesn't end with a dead perpetrator.
Sharon McCone is contracted by a refugee assistance agency. There had been emigration on a large scale of people from Vietnam, people who had lost everything. They had been housed throughout San Francisco wherever cheap housing could be found. In one apartment building, referred to as a Tenderloin hotel, someone has been trying to terrorize residents: creepy shadows in the stairwells, howling noises in the furnace room, and random power loss to the building.
Soon after she begins to investigate, one of the young men in the building is found murdered in the furnace room.
A lot of elements intertwine: a porn producer promising a young immigrant woman her break into show business through his films, the clash between maintaining traditional cultural identity versus assimilating American experiences, religious zealot street preachers and a homeless man who communicates predominantly through quoting Yeats.
This one doesn't end with a dead perpetrator.
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